How can I read keyboard without stopping

[Ronald G Minnich]

In article <1305 at mcgill-vision.UUCP> mouse at mcgill-vision.UUCP (der Mouse) writes:
>Tty EOF-character semantics are a muddy point: is it really EOF or is
>it just a "push", which looks like EOF when typed alone on a line?  Or
>is it something else?  The push interpretation seems to be common.
Yeah, this was a good point, as was chris's that EOF is a transient
thing. And it is, in many cases. And in many other cases, it is not
(e.g. you hit the end of a pipe and the proc on the other end just died.
You ain't goin' no where). So, it seems to me there are two types
of EOF- the real thing and the wanna be's. The ^D and such on a tty
are wanna be's; reading from a pipe the other end of which is closed
are the real thing. On some systems the equivalent of 'tty ^D' is very much
the real thing, to say the least ... the HP3000 had no less than 
3 ways to deliver 'pseudo-eof' from a terminal, and the 'hardest' one
not even their CLI's knew how to interpret!
   So, does it yet make sense to have the kernel tell you in a simple way?
"You just hit eof. and it's for good this time" vs. "You just hit 
eof. You can try again later, though".
   Gee, its these simple details that have always confused me the most ...
ron